Book (Oxford University Press), The Judicial Construction of Europe, ch. 3: The Free Movement of Goods

Abstract

In the previous chapter, we showed how transnational activity, the adjudication of the European Community (EC) law, and EC lawmaking had developed symbiotically to determine much of what is important about European integration. We also provided evidence in support of our contention that, under the Court’s tutelage, negative integration (the removal of barriers to transnational exchange) provoked, and helped to organize, positive integration (the development of common European policies to regulate transnational exchange). Here, we provide a more detailed sectoral account of how the adjudication of one class of trading disputes gradually, but authoritatively, undermined the intergovernmental aspects of the EC, while enhancing the polity’s supranational, or federal, character.